Free Republic

On the evening of November 11, 2025, University College London provided a lecture theatre and official student-society imprimatur for an event at which Dr. Samar Maqusi, a former fixed-term researcher at UCL and previously employed by the UNRWA for Palestine Refugees, delivered the opening lecture in a five-part series entitled “Palestine: From Existence to Resistance”, organized by the university’s recognized Justice in Palestine Society. From the very beginning, there was no hesitation or pretense. On the contrary, the darkest prejudices of the past were brought to life. The lecturer was undaunted. In the course of her talk, “The Birth of...

One of the more bizarre artifacts of the Israel-Hamas War—which Hamas started just over two years ago, when it attacked, murdered, and kidnapped more than 1,000 Israeli civilians—is the exposure of the rabid and rampant antisemitism among the Irish, especially Irish Catholics. One might expect that Catholics—whose popes have denounced antisemitism off and on since the sixth century and have clearly and repeatedly condemned it since the 1930s—would be understanding of the Jewish people’s plight and willing to listen to Pope Pius XI’s admonition that “Antisemitism is inadmissible. Spiritually, we are all Semites.” In the case of many Irish Catholics,...

Sir Keir Starmer will host Volodymyr Zelensky at Downing Street on Monday in a hastily arranged summit on the progress of peace talks. The Prime Minister will be joined in London by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, and Friedrich Merz, the German Chancellor. The trio of European leaders are attempting to ensure Ukraine is not “betrayed” during the US-led peace process with Russia, a possibility Mr Macron alluded to in a leaked phone call earlier this week. The meeting comes as top Ukrainian officials have been holding talks in Miami with Mr Trump’s chief envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner....

Sir Keir Starmer has enlisted the help of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron in his battle against Nigel Farage's Reform UK. The Prime Minister revealed the trio of 'centrist' politicians recently discussed how to take on 'populists' such as Mr Farage. The leaders of the UK, Germany and France met for dinner in Berlin last month to discuss European security, Ukraine and the Middle East. But Sir Keir has now said their talks also focused on their shared domestic challenges and battles with both far-Right parties and hard-Left parties. Mr Merz is continuing to face a...

Edinburgh Airport says no flights are operating on Friday morning due to computer problems in the air traffic control system. The airport says teams are working on the issue and will resolve it as soon as possible. The airport, in a statement released on X, advised passengers to check with their airlines for the latest flight information.

Nigel Farage has erupted after the Labour government moved to cancel yet more elections next year. Voters in Essex, Hampshire, Sussex, Brighton, Norfolk and Suffolk were set to have their say on new mayors in 2026, as part of Labour’s commitment to more devolution. However it emerged last night that these elections are now being postponed until 2028, with ministers set to blame local council reorganisations for the delay. Nigel Farage has now condemned the move, branding it ‘despotic’. The Reform UK leader slammed: “For the second year running, this failing Labour government will now CANCEL elections in areas they...

The United States announced a deal with Britain for zero tariffs on pharmaceutical products and medical technology on Monday (Dec 1) which will lead to Britain spending more on medicines. The deal included an increase in the percentage of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) budget that is spent on medicines. "The US and the United Kingdom announce this negotiated outcome pricing for innovative pharmaceuticals, which will help drive investment and innovation in both countries," US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer said in a statement.

Jury trials in England and Wales for crimes that carry a likely sentence of less than three years will be scrapped, the justice secretary has announced. The reforms to the justice system include creating "swift courts" under the government's plan to tackle unprecedented delays in the court system. Serious offences including murder, robbery and rape will still go before a jury, and volunteer community magistrates, who deal with the majority of all criminal cases, will take on even more work. David Lammy said the reforms were "bold" but "necessary", but the Conservatives described the plans as the "beginning of the...

Are you digging the World War Two analogies? Everyone's the new Hitler, because he's the only historical figure anyone's ever heard of. At their Monday-night poker game in hell, that no-name Jap guy must be wondering why he's chopped liver, but it's probably racist to bring that up. World War Two "presupposes there was a World War One, right?" - as the late William Henry III claimed to have heard an American college student formulate it. No one knows anything about that either, but it left almost all the great empires in ruins, and thus bequeathed us the dawn of...

The United Kingdom needs to be turned off and rebooted. No, I take that back. It needs a whole new operating system. The current one has become infected with a virus that has scrambled everything, and there is no way to set things right. In the opposite world view this is totally fine. pic.twitter.com/v5CahE52GL— Rich Stewart 🔰 (@richdstew) November 29, 2025If you think this story is bonkers, it really is only the tip of the iceberg. An IT consultant was arrested by police in Britain after he posted a picture online of himself posing with a gun in the US....

A man has been jailed for possessing and distributing extreme right-wing music and material.Norbert Gyurcsik, from Kestrel Road, Hereford, was arrested in May last year over albums in which lyrics breached terrorism legislation and intended to incite racial hatred.

Freedom of speech will be under even greater threat if the British government is able to do away with jury trials for almost all cases because legal studies show a judge sitting alone is far more likely to convict defendants in free speech than juries, the Free Speech Union warns. The Free Speech Union warns the United Kingdom risks losing “a check on governmental power and arbitrary justice” in “the biggest assault on our liberties in 800 years” if the government is able to push ahead this week with plans said to be looking at abolishing the right to a...

A NEW poll has put Keir Starmer's Labour Party in fourth place behind Reform, the Greens and Conservatives. The Find Out Now survey carried out this week put Labour on just 15%, a staggering three points behind the Greens as Zack Polanski's party continues to surge in popularity with voters. The poll of 2717 people put Reform UK on 33%, the Greens on 18%, the Conservatives on 16% and the LibDems on 11%. Labour came just 12% ahead of the SNP, who voters can only opt for in Scotland. Translated into seats, it means Reform would win a General Election...

When former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi moved to England a year ago they put the blame firmly on Donald Trump. The American TV star said she decided to settle in the Cotswolds the day after Mr Trump was re-elected President because life 'is just better' in the UK. But now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Ms DeGeneres has told friends she and Ms de Rossi are planning to spend more time in sunny California because they 'miss their friends' and dread the thought of another British winter. A source said: 'Ellen...

Whatever happened to Britain, or the UK, or England, or whatever they’re calling it? We can’t even agree on what it’s called. But what happened to England, the England that, if you’re over 50, you grew up learning about, the England that controlled the world, the England that ran the largest empire in human history at the end of the first world war? Britain, which is an island in a pretty inhospitable climate, controlled something like a quarter of the Earth’s surface – and not controlled in the way the United States controls the rest of the world with an...

Tens of thousands rallied in Paris on Saturday to show support for Palestinians in Gaza, as protesters accused Israel of violating a fragile US-brokered ceasefire and demanded tougher international action amid soaring death tolls and ongoing restrictions on aid. Gaza’s health ministry, run by Hamas, said Saturday that more than 70,000 people have been killed since the war began. “Gaza, Gaza, Paris is with you.” Marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, tens of thousands of people, according to organizers, marched in Paris on Saturday to show support for Palestinians in Gaza, devastated by more than two...

As Europeans scrambled to help Volodymyr Zelensky push back on America’s 28-point peace plan, the Ukrainian president’s first European call was with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany. In Johannesburg for the G20 summit, this trio—Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz—sat down together the next day to agree on a strategy, dispatching their respective national-security advisers to meet American and Ukrainian delegations in Geneva. Quietly, the trio is emerging as Europe’s new top-tier leadership.

West Yorkshire Police arrested a British business owner over a picture he posted on social media of himself holding a gun in the United States. IT contractor Jon Richelieu-Booth told the Yorkshire Post that in August, he posted a picture on the networking site LinkedIn of himself holding a shotgun at a friend’s homestead in Florida. He was visited by local police, who warned him about the post and told him to be “careful” about what he says online and “how it makes people feel.” Eleven days after the post, West Yorkshire Police officers returned and arrested Richelieu-Booth over allegedly...

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Thursday he is "very concerned" about the apparently inaccurate information received by the West Midlands Police that led to the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending the Europa League match against Aston Villa. "I'm very concerned and troubled by what we're seeing in terms of the intelligence reporting," he told The Jewish Chronicle. "I think we need to get to the bottom of that to find out exactly what happened, and that's the immediate next step." "I think it's not just one police force. We need to look consistently across to see...

FRANCE is belatedly to make limited attempts to stop migrant dinghies at sea – after Keir Starmer privately admitted there was ‘no effective deterrent’. The astonishing admission has emerged in a leak to a French newspaper, showing the British Prime Minister has begged for action to halt the rising numbers of small boats crossing the Channel. More than 60,000 migrants have arrived in Britain via dinghy since Labour’s election last year. One of Sir Keir’s first acts was to abandon the Conservative deterrent plan of flying all small boat arrivals to Rwanda. His own policy of deporting a small proportion...